Pragmatism vs Stalinism

Not at all.
Pragmatism would never defend a deceitful dictatorship like North Korea.
Because hardly any hypotheses even allowed to be promoted in North Korean society were ever maximally useful for the people of North Korea, not even for its dictator.
Haven't you grasped even the definition you just quoted?
Pragmatism is by far the most democarcy-promoting philosophy ever invented precisely because it does NOT recognize ultimate truths, only the meta-truth of conditions for truth, which in turn is an aggressive oponent of any form of closed society with a closed debate.
Ushta
Alexander

2011/8/13 Parviz Varjavand

"Pragmatism, as a tendency in philosophy, signifies the insistence on usefulness or practical consequences as a test of truth. In its negative phase, it opposes what it styles the formalism or rationalism of Intellectualistic philosophy. That is, it objects to the view that concepts, judgments, and reasoning processes are representative of reality and the processes of reality. It considers them to be merely symbols, hypotheses and schemata devised by man to facilitate or render possible the use, or experience, of reality. This use, or experience, is the true test of real existence. In its positive phase, therefore, Pragmatism sets up as the standard of truth some non-rational test, such as action, satisfaction of needs, realization in conduct, the possibility of being lived, and judges reality by this norm to the exclusion of all others."<<

So for the many persons who were born and died during the communist rule in North Korea, the norms, the rules, the tools used to enforce, and the results achieved by that state, should be Pragmatically, the Asha, the Truth and another name for God. Opposing that regime would bring all manners of harm upon them while obeying it would WORK for them. I do not know of any government who does not have Jails and Spy networks, so Jails and Secret Agencies are Asha, because they Work and everybody is using them. Who cares what the TRUTH may be and what DROJ might be, any DROJ that WORKS is the TRUTH and ASHA! Members of the CIA are the true ASHAVANDS then, because they care for nothing other than what WORKS for them. Is this correct according to you Dino, or am I mistaken here somewhere?

Also a student of philosophy,
Parviz Varjavand